Thoughts, ideas, tips, musings, and pontifications (not necessarily in that order) by Ben Forta ...
NOTE: This is my personal blog, and the opinions and statements voiced here are my own.
June 3, 2009
In conjunction with the public beta of Flash Builder 4, Adobe Developer Connection has published lots of new ColdFusion related content, including:
|
I can totally see the rationale behind this approach. We're trying to make this product more broadly adopted and if it is considered "too hard" then it won't be. HOWEVER, The approach seems to be kind of an anti-pattern - like all the MVC you need is the MVC these wizards create for you. As a seasoned Flash/Flex developer that is an irritating thought.
I've worked long and hard to know what I know and I'm disinclined to use an IDE that shields me from the low level details. I'm also kind of skeptical that this approach to app develoment (as described in the articles) will suit a larger project.
Jeff
I'm not 100% sure which article you are referring to, but I assume you are talking about the new Data Service panel in Flash Builder 4. I'm a bit confused on where you see the overlap with MVC. What this new panel intends to do is bridge the gap between your client and server-side development so you can work in the abstract of 'services' not 'ColdFusion AMF' or 'PHP Webservices'. It also helps to abstract the concept of Data Types across disparate server-side systems.
I see your concern over dragging a service onto a datagrid and calling that a finished application. However, if you look at the code it's generating, it's fairly clean and direct. The logic can easily be copied into something like PureMVC, Swiz or Caringorm if you want to adhere to other best practices. Of course, you can always just _not_ drag a service onto an item.
When a service is imported into the Data Service panel, FB creates all the corresponding AS classes and packages for you to consume the service. It uses base/super classes to allow you to then extend without having to alter the generate code. The FB team was very mindful not to try and push a specific methodology or best practice.
As far as Bolt is concerned, we've taken the same approach. It's never been our business to dictate a framework or pattern for use with ColdFusion. The tools and the server should not get in the way of how you want to developer. Even if you want to write a bunch of procedural spaghetti code. :-(
Bolt's code gen is written as a pluggable extension in CFML. Which means that if you don't like the way the code looks of behaves, you can change it yourself! There is definitely a fine line between convention and RAD development. I think RoR goes way to far w/ convention but it's why it's considered to be so productive. We are taking a more pragmatic approach and trying to compartmentalize each aspect so stubbing applications is quick and easy, but still provide the tools so developers can make their own rules.
-Adam Lehman
ColdFusion Product Manager @ Adobe
This has been a long time coming i.e product placement along side of some of Adobe's flag ship products. This is great for CF and the community as a whole. The community really needs a shot in the arm like this. I don't think the meaning of all this has sunk in yet.
I have been all over the Flash Builder Beta and the docs said a version of Flash builder will come with Bolts code generation capability. I CANNOT WAIT to get my hands on Bolt to see what I can get Flash Builder and Bolt to do.